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Biography
Dorit Bar-On is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut and Director of the Expression, Communication, and the Origins of Meaning (ECOM) Research Group. Her research focuses on philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, epistemology, and metaethics. She previously held positions at the University of Rochester and UNC-Chapel Hill, where she was the Zachary Smith Distinguished Term Professor of Research and Undergraduate Education from 2014-2015.
Education and career
Bar-On earned a BA (summa cum laude) at Tel Aviv University in Philosophy & Linguistics before earning her MA and PhD in Philosophy at UCLA. Her dissertation, Indeterminacy of Translation: Theory and Practice, was written under the supervision of Tyler Burge, Rogers Albritton, Keith Donnellan, David Kaplan, and David Pears. Bar-On has also written Hebrew translations of poetry, fiction, and philosophy, including three anthologies in modern philosophy, writings by Iris Murdoch, Kurt Vonnegut, Dos Passos, Dorothy Richardson, E. E. Cummings, Robert Louis Stevenson, Walter Scott, and, in collaboration with Marcia Falk, a collection of poems by Zelda Schneerson Mishkovsky and The Book of Blessings.
Bar-On has written Hebrew translations of poetry, fiction, and philosophy, including three anthologies in modern philosophy.
Her other professional experience includes being a radio producer, editor and broadcaster for the Israel IDF radio station, a television writer and host in Israel, and a Hebrew television newscaster and interviewer for Channel 18 in Los Angeles. Bar-On also formerly served as the President of MYCO@UNC, a youth chamber organization, from 2009 to 2012.
Research
In Speaking My Mind: Expression and Self-Knowledge, published by Ocford University Press, Bar-On investigates the problem of self-knowledge (how, if at all, we are each in a privileged position to know own mental states) in relation to questions of expression and expressive behavior. She draws on historical figures including Wittgenstein and Darwin to develop a neo-expressivist view of first-personal expressive utterances (such as, "I am in pain") which explains how these utterances differ epistemically from non-expressive utterances while sharing the same semantic structure. Speaking My Mind has been praised as "a rich book; rich in topics, in argumentation, and in philosophical imagination and insight. It deserves the attention of all who work in mind and language." In subsequent work, Bar-On has applied this neo-expressivist framework to additional problems in the philosophy of language, metaethics, and epistemology. More recently, Bar-On has sought to illuminate the nature of human communication by situating it in relation to animal expressive communication more broadly, and thereby to show how human linguistic meaning can be understood consistently with a naturalistic theory of the world.
Selected publications
- “Pragmatic Interpretation and Signaler-Receiver Asymmetries in Animal Communication” (with Richard Moore), Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Animal Minds (Andrews and Beck, eds.), forthcoming
- “Gricean Intentions, Expressive Communication, and Origins of Meaning”, Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Animal Minds (Andrews and Beck, eds.), forthcoming
- “Knowing Our Own Beliefs” (with Kate Nolfi), Oxford Handbook Online, 2016
- “Sociality, Expression, and This Thing Called Language”, Inquiry (special issue), 2016
- “Emotions and Their Expressions” (with Jim Sias), Emotional Expression (Abell and Smith, eds.), Cambridge UP, 2015
- “Transparency, Expression, and Self-Knowledge”, Philosophical Explorations (special issue), 2015
- “Expression: Acts, Products, and Meaning”, in Meaning Without Representation: Essays on Truth, Expression, Normativity, and Naturalism (Steven Gross et. al. eds.), Oxford UP, 2015
- “(How) Is Ethical Neo-Expressivism a Hybrid View?” (with Matthew Chrisman and Jim Sias), in Having It Both Ways: Hybrid Theories and Modern Metaethics (Fletcher and Ridge, eds.), Oxford UP (2014)
- “Expressive Communication and Continuity Skepticism”, Journal of Philosophy (June 2013)
- “Origins of Meaning: Must We ‘Go Gricean’?”, Mind & Language (June 2013)
- “Varieties of Expressivism” (with Jim Sias), in Philosophy Compass (May 2013)
- “Expression, Truth, and Reality: Some Variations on Themes from Wright”, in Mind, Meaning, and Knowledge: Themes from the Philosophy of Crispin Wright, A. Coliva, ed., Oxford UP (2012)
- “Externalism and Skepticism: Recognition, Expression, and Self-Knowledge”, in Self-Knowledge and the Self, A. Coliva, ed., Oxford UP (2011)
- “Triangulation and the Beasts” (with Matthew Priselac) in Triangulation, in From an Epistemological Point of View, C. Amoretti and G. Preyer, eds., Ontos Verlag (2011)
- “Lionspeak: Communication, Expression, and Meaning” (with Mitchell Green), in Self, Language, and World: Problems from Kant, Sellars, and Rosenberg; in Memory of Jay F. Rosenberg, J. O’Shea and E. Rubenstein, eds. 2010
- “Precis of Speaking My Mind: Expression and Self-Knowledge”, Acta Analytica 25 No. 1, 2010 1-8
- “Avowals: Expression, Security, and Knowledge: Reply to Matthew Boyle, David Rosenthal, and Maura Tumulty”, special issue on Bar-On’s Speaking My Mind: Expression and Self-Knowledge, and Green’s Self-Expression, M. Boyle, ed., Acta Analytica 25 No. 1, 47-64, 2010
- “Neo-Expressivism: Avowals’ Security and Privileged Self-Knowledge”, (Reply to Brueckner)’, in Self-Knowledge A. Hatzimoysis, ed., Oxford UP, 2010
- “Ethical Neo-Expressivism” (with Matthew Chrisman) Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Vol. V, 2009
- “First-Person Authority: Dualism, Constitutivism, and Neo-Expressivism” Erkenntnis 2009
- “The Use of Force Against Deflationism: Assertion and Truth”, (with Keith Simmons) in Truth and Speech Acts: Studies in the Philosophy of Language, Greimann and Siegwart, eds., Routledge, 2007, 61-89.
- “Deflationism”, (with Keith Simmons) in Oxford Handbook in Philosophy of Language, Ernie LePore, ed., Oxford University Press, 2006, 607-630.
- “Semantic Eliminativism and the ‘Theory'-Theory of Linguistic Understanding”, in New Essays in Philosophy of Language and Mind, C. Viger, R. Stainton, M. Ezcurdia, 2004d, 159-200.
- “Language, Concepts and Culture: Between Pluralism and Relativism”, Facta Philosophica 6, 2004c, 183-221.
- “Deflationism and Truth-Condition Theories of Meaning”, (with William Lycan, and Claire Horisk), reprinted with Postscript in Deflationary Truth, B. P. Armour-Garb and JC Beall (eds.), Open Court Readings in Philosophy, 2004b, 321-352.
- “Externalism and Self-Knowledge: Content, Use, and Expression”, Nous, 38 2004a: 430-455.
- “Knowing Selves: Expression, Truth, and Knowledge”, (with Douglas Long) Privileged Access: Philosophical Accounts of Self-Knowledge (Brie Gertler, ed.), Ashgate Epistemology and Mind Series, 2003, 179-212.
- “Avowals and First-Person Privilege”, (with Douglas Long), Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 62, 2001, 311-335.
- “Speaking My Mind”, Philosophical Topics 28, 2000, 1-34.
- “Deflationism and Truth-Condition Theories of Meaning”, (with William Lycan, and Claire Horisk), Philosophical Studies 101, 1999, 1-28.
- “Natural’ Semantic Facts – Between Eliminativism and Hyper-Realism”, The Maribor Papers in Naturalized Semantics, Dunja Jutronic, ed., 1997, 99-117.
- “Anti-Realism and Speaker Knowledge”, Synthese 106, 1996, 139-166.
- “Reconstructing `Meaning': Grice and the Naturalization of Semantics”, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 76, 1995, 83-116.
- “Conceptual Relativism and Translation”, Language, Mind and Epistemology, Preyer et al (eds.), Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994, 145-170.
- “Indeterminacy of Translation: Theory and Practice” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 53, 1993, 781-810.
- “Is There Such a Thing as a Language” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, (with Mark Risjord), 22, 1992c, 163-190.
- “Semantic Verificationism, Linguistic Behaviorism, and Translation” Philosophical Studies 66, 1992b, 235-59.
- “On the Possibility of a Solitary Language”, Nous 26, 1992a, 27-46.
- “The Underdetermination of Scientific Theories and the Indeterminacy of Semantic Theory”, Proceedings of Logica, 1991, 13-25.
- “Scepticism: The External World and Meaning”, Philosophical Studies 60, 1990c, 207-231.
- “Justifying Beliefs: The Dream Hypothesis and Gratuitous Entities”, in Doubting: Contemporary Perspectives on Skepticism (Ross and Roth eds.), 1990b, 81-92.
- “Individual Justice and Preferential Treatment”, Public Affairs Quarterly, 1990.
- “Semantic Indeterminacy and Scientific Underdetermination”, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 67, 245-263.